How western greed fuelled Putin’s rise and enabled his war machine

The west has been the architect of a corrupt world order in which rich and powerful men like Putin – said to be a multibillionaire in his own right – feel they can get away with anything, writes Borzou Daragahi

Even after Russia attacked and disfigured Georgia in 2008, Putin was allowed to remain in the G8 (Lehtikuva/AFP/Getty)

Governments around the world are rightly condemning Vladimir Putin’s illegal and completely unjustified invasion of Ukraine – a peaceful nation of 44 million that has never posed a threat to its neighbours, and has been struggling to emerge from centuries under the yoke of foreign powers and decades of corruption and misrule.

Draconian sanctions have been imposed, and some Russian banks are now barred from the Swift messaging system that is a backbone of efficient contemporary international banking.

But those same nations now condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine played a major role in Putin’s rise and the growth of his outsized ambitions, as well as a massive war chest worth hundreds of billions of dollars. There have been policy blunders born out of laziness and ideological rigidity, and inaction spurred by a lack of imagination. Driving all of this, however, has been greed.